$2,999 Mac Pro to go on sale in December in all its Dalek-resembling glory

Made in the USA: Mac Pro overhaul finally ready for an eager legion of buyers.

The long gap between releases of Apple's most powerful computer—the Mac Pro—is finally about to come to an end. The company today announced that the first major upgrade of the Pro since August 2010 will be released in December.

The entry-level model will cost $2,999 and will come with a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB VRAM each, and 256GB of SSD. The machine is being assembled in the US, Apple said today.

Mac users with heavy processing needs, such as graphics professionals, were disappointed when Apple didn't refresh the stagnating platform last year. CEO Tim Cook promised that great news for Mac Pro users would come sometime in 2013, and Apple delivered on that promise in June when it unveiled a Mac Pro with a smaller design and upgraded internals. At the time, Apple said only that it would be "coming later this year," and the company didn't announce the official launch window until today.

The Mac Pro now has a cylindrical design, looking much like a black trash can. Its shell can be taken off in a "Darth Vader's helmet" sort of way, revealing futuristic looking innards that I like to think resemble a Dalek.

The Mac Pro.

Apple

Daleks.

BBC

As we noted in previous coverage, fully loaded Pros can feature up to 12 cores-worth of Intel Xeon E5 chips, with up to 30MB L3 cache and 40GBps PCI Express bandwidth. There's a four-channel DDR3 memory controller that runs at 1866MHz, delivering up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth (twice as high as the previous model). Two AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM each help support up to three 4K displays, with GPU performance going from 2.7 to seven teraflops. Apple also promised 528GB/s total bandwidth.

"There's never been a system that can do what the Mac Pro can do with 4K video," Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller said today.

The Mac Pro can have up to 1TB of user-accessible flash storage, with 1.2GB/s read speeds and 1GB/s write speed. Wireless connectivity is provided with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

With its cover off, ports for Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 1.4 are revealed. Thunderbolt in particular is impressive, with six ports, each supporting up to six daisy-chained devices, 36 in total. Thunderbolt will provide 20Gbps throughput, Apple said today.

The new Mac Pro design also helps with power and cooling. Instead of multiple heat sinks and fans, heat is conducted away from the CPUs and GPUs and distributed across a "unified thermal core." That means "if one processor isn’t working as hard as the others, the extra thermal capacity can be shared efficiently among them," Apple has said.

The Mac Pro is environmentally friendly, with Energy Star 6 and EPEAT Gold certifications, Apple said. In an idle state, it consumes 43 watts and will be about as loud as a Mac mini.

Although the specs and re-design are impressive, the small package isn't completely beneficial to potential users. Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability." Apple called it "the most expandable Mac ever built" because of its Thunderbolt ports, but Girard noted that it has no extra internal drive bays, only four USB 3.0 ports, and no optical drive. There's also no Nvidia option for the GPU.

The Mac Pro may not have everything users want, and it likely won't be the best-selling Mac computer. But with the three-year gap in major updates making Windows-based workstations look attractive even to Mac devotees, the Pro's release is important for Apple to hold on to users with the most intensive computing needs.

Apple’s event is currently in progress, and we will update this article as more details become available. Ars is there in person, so for up-to-the-minute information you can follow our liveblog.

Promoted Comments

I'm in no way a "media creation pro". I do a lot of bootstrapping statistics and phylogenetic trees (which is moderately computationally intensive) in my day job. BUT, I am also a pretty high end hobbyist photographer... And to put the $3K cost of the entry level machine in context; this year alone I spent ~$10,000 on a 3 week trip to Chile, dragging with me ~20K worth of photographic equipment to pursue this hobby.

I am a heavy Aperture user, occasional Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

The entry level machine kicks my current MacPro's butt, and costs less than the D800e I shoot with every couple of weeks, yet I am in front of my MacPro every single day. I'm probably going to buy one...

I suspect that the target/potential audience is broader and deeper than many suspect.

Spec wise this is pretty close in price to existing workstations from Dell and HP in that price range and feature set. The Mac has Thunderbolt2 while they have internal expandability. Depending on your usage one may be better than the other. Generally I would go with internal known parts over pie in the sky maybe someone will make them parts.

The big differentiator for pro hardware is warranty support. What kind of support does the Mac Pro have? HP Z230's have three year next business day parts and labor and 24/7 phone support standard. With options to buy upgrades as well. Last I knew Apple had nothing like this.

238 Reader Comments

Looks like you will, but since they're going with HDMI instead of something less widely used (like one of the form factor variations on display port or something proprietary), they're not that expensive:

DisplayPort (and mini-DisplayPort) are open spec, but HDMI has to be licensed. HDMI might be a bit cheaper because of production volume, but I strongly prefer DisplayPort because of the open spec, and because it's technically superior and currently got considerably more bandwidth than the newest HDMI spec, HDMI 1.4.

I wasn't planning on buying the revised Mac Pro for myself, but I'm sure I'll encounter them in the enterprise and I'm disappointed at the choice of HDMI over DisplayPort nonetheless.

Uhhh, did you miss the six Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back or something? You do know you can connect standard Mini DisplayPort displays directly to those in addition to using them for high speed external expansion, right?

Looks like you will, but since they're going with HDMI instead of something less widely used (like one of the form factor variations on display port or something proprietary), they're not that expensive:

DisplayPort (and mini-DisplayPort) are open spec, but HDMI has to be licensed. HDMI might be a bit cheaper because of production volume, but I strongly prefer DisplayPort because of the open spec, and because it's technically superior and currently got considerably more bandwidth than the newest HDMI spec, HDMI 1.4.

I wasn't planning on buying the revised Mac Pro for myself, but I'm sure I'll encounter them in the enterprise and I'm disappointed at the choice of HDMI over DisplayPort nonetheless.

Uhhh, did you miss the six Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back or something? You do know you can connect standard Mini DisplayPort displays directly to those in addition to using them for high speed external expansion, right?

OK, I didn't know that the Thunderbolt port was compatible with DisplayPort. Thanks to your comment, I checked it out on Wikipedia, and:"Thunderbolt 2 incorporates DisplayPort 1.2 support, which allows for video streaming to a single 4K video monitor or dual QHD monitors."

I'm not even going to comment on whether the price is worth it or not - that's way too subjective and based on an individual's finances and the value they set on their time and how much more productive this device will or will not make them.

But that's a beautifully elegant case design given the cooling properties. And I actually disagree about the expandability. Yes it's true it would be nice to have more internal slots but given how fast Thunderbolt is, I think it's actually not that unreasonable to call this expandable.

Looks like you will, but since they're going with HDMI instead of something less widely used (like one of the form factor variations on display port or something proprietary), they're not that expensive:

DisplayPort (and mini-DisplayPort) are open spec, but HDMI has to be licensed. HDMI might be a bit cheaper because of production volume, but I strongly prefer DisplayPort because of the open spec, and because it's technically superior and currently got considerably more bandwidth than the newest HDMI spec, HDMI 1.4.

I wasn't planning on buying the revised Mac Pro for myself, but I'm sure I'll encounter them in the enterprise and I'm disappointed at the choice of HDMI over DisplayPort nonetheless.

Well it also doesn't help that I was also completely wrong about that being able to work for the user I responded to.

no one cares that your noisy, rattly clone box with an i7 in it is half the price (I'm using one right now, before you start).

In all seriousness, I think that might be the biggest surprise for me about [many] non-Apple computers: that people put up with the noise. If I can hear my computer, it's too loud.

Agree 100% with the noise issue. However, my (07?) Mac Pro sounded like a jet engine while my PC is dead silent. Though I did specify the fans & case to deaden the noise on the latter.

I've been excited for a new Mac Pro for a long time. Now that excitement has transformed into lust and confusion. I love portability, but will 450W cut it? Can the graphics cards be upgraded in the future? How the hell am I going to afford three 4K displays?

On one hand, I like the out-of-the-box design. I appreciate Apple trying new things and the general theory of Thunderbolt had a nice story to it.

The reality is that since I moved from Mac to PC workstations years ago (mostly due to my 3D software only being PC based), I discovered that my PC workstation can be constantly upgraded for a surprisingly low cost.

As it stands right now, the Mac Pro doesn't have the 3rd party devices on Thunderbolt. And if I can buy one today, where will I stand in 36-48 months? Maybe Apple will supply upgrade parts, such as the ability to swap out for better graphics or faster CPUs?

For now, unless you need OSX, the Windows workstation is just a better value and currently offers more future-proofing. This is great for the smaller business or the individual.

Where I see these selling are in production companies that are mid-size or have very high margins. places where they are either showing off that they have the latest hardware, something easier to do with this computer vs. a new workstation. Or they require OSX for something, likely Final Cut. And maybe they just bought it as part of a turn-key system from a 3rd party integrator with storage, I/O devices, etc... all in a single price bundle.

This really isn't that much different than past Mac Pros though.

I'll watch the platform closely. But I have a feeling by the time Thunderbolt catches on, you'll have the ports in all your PC workstations too. So really it is about the software. If the software works better on the Mac Pro to justify the price, I'll buy.

You people claiming there are "no thunderbolt devices" need to do your homework. That was true a year and a half ago maybe. There's a lot of it out there now. You just don't see it at common retailers stores because it's something pros use and most consumer stores don't carry it because it's not something most consumers are interested in. In fact I'd wager the reason it ISNT IN RETAIL STORES IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE MAKING THIS ERRONEOUS CLAIM THAT THERE ARE NO DEVICES... And are constantly predicting doom and gloom over it.

(Mostly from people claiming they don't need it because "usb3, eSata, FibreChannel, Aston Kutcher..." and/or whatever else. These people tend to be Mac haters and still think of Thunderbolt as an Apple thing and refuse to see it's merits for this reason even though it's an Intel thing and has nothing to do with Apple.) These same people tend to ignore the fact that Thunderbolt can carry any protocol as well "cuz usb3 rulez, thunderbolt droolz... Or somesuch." It's cognitive dissonance at it's most amusing extreme.

Oh yeah... and "Obama is a Muslim antichrist terrorist and is trying to bring down the country with cheap healthcare." (Apparently) </sarcasm>

Note: It might also be useful to mention that every disruptive connection technology made primarily with pro users in mind has been met with this sort of "water cooler myth" vitriol. SCSI had it, FireWire had it. It's nothing even remotely new. Now it just travels faster "cuz Interwebz."

I'm in no way a "media creation pro". I do a lot of bootstrapping statistics and phylogenetic trees (which is moderately computationally intensive) in my day job.

Most phylogeny programs would put these 12 cores to good use, but sadly making it AMD only saddens me because one of the programs I use the most (BEAST) uses CUDA for parallelization… Dual-very-good-GPUs from nVidia would make me much happier.

In fact I'd wager the reason it ISNT IN RETAIL STORES IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE MAKING THIS ERRONEOUS CLAIM THAT THERE ARE NO DEVICES

Aside from the fact that screaming makes you look silly, the reason people claim that there are very few TB devices is that, in comparison with other, more widespread technologies (like PCIe, SATA, USB etc) the number of TB devices is negligible.

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(Mostly from people claiming they don't need it because "usb3, eSata, FibreChannel, Aston Kutcher..." and/or whatever else. These people tend to be Mac haters and still think of Thunderbolt as an Apple thing

At the moment it *is* an Apple thing. TB is virtually non-existant outside the Apple ecosystem. And before you label everyone disagreeing with you as 'Mac Hater' (a typical straw man) you should consider that the majority of computing in the world happens without Apple. So unless TB is taken up outside the Apple ecosystem, it is largely irrelevant.

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and refuse to see it's merits for this reason even though it's an Intel thing and has nothing to do with Apple.) These same people tend to ignore the fact that Thunderbolt can carry any protocol as well "cuz usb3 rulez, thunderbolt droolz... Or somesuch." It's cognitive dissonance at it's most amusing extreme.

You're the one with the cognitive dissonance. It's great that TB can carry USB and HDMI and whatever. The thing is that (outside the Apple world) very few people actually *need* (or want!) a single cable (which is also a SPOF) that carries all the signals when two or three separate cables for 1/10th the price do the same. An external 1TB USB3 drive costs me roughly GPB50. Why should I pay almost three times as much for the same caspacity with TB interface? The hard drive in these things usually can't even saturate USB3. So TB just because 'it's cool'? I don't think so.

Same with HDMI or PCIe. A HDMI cable costs a few bucks. How much was that active TB cable again? There are hundreds of PCIe expansion cards available. For a desktop workstation, where is the benefit in having another box with my PCIe cards when they could actually be *inside* the computer? All while saving me the cost for that TB-PCIe expander and the expensive cable.

At the moment TB is a boutique solution in search of a real problem (I still think intel dropped the ball when going away from fibre cabling which could have been cheaper). Apple for some reason thinks it's cool and slick so here we go. But that doesn't mean it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. If all your computer offers are TB ports then, well, there's not much of a choice. But outside the Apple ecosystem where expandability is actually a major thing, no-one will pay the premium for TB unless there's a clear benefit in using it. And reality is, outside Apple's little world, at the moment there rarely is.

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Note: It might also be useful to mention that every disruptive connection technology made primarily with pro users in mind has been met with this sort of "water cooler myth" vitriol. SCSI had it, FireWire had it. It's nothing even remotely new. Now it just travels faster "cuz Interwebz."

That's nonsense. Neither Firewire nor SCSI have been "disruptive technologies", and TB isn't as well (go read about what technologies were already available at the time these standards were conceived, and you'll see that these were merely evolutions of existing technologies).

Don't know but I'm sure in a couple of years TB will be the main replacement for FireWire. Sorry but USB is not a competitor to FireWire never was, and IDE was never a competitor to SCSI. The fact that PC manufacturers chose the cheaper option, and in some cases never offered FireWire, just highlights some of the frustration that creative professionals would have. And TB is a heck of a lot cheaper than the storage options for PC, creative professionals aren't buying their external storage from Tesco.

Don't know but I'm sure in a couple of years TB will be the main replacement for FireWire.

Maybe. Maybe not. USB3 might as well be 'good enough' for connecting external local storage and other devices, and even more stuff will probably sit on a NAS/SAN or in the cloud.

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Sorry but USB is not a competitor to FireWire never was, and IDE was never a competitor to SCSI.

That's not true. Of course USB was a competitor to FW. Both standards were used for external storage but USB has taken the majority of the market for itself and away from FW. No question that USB2 was the technically inferior solution but at the end of the day it was good enough for most situations. FW has only lived on in some niche areas.

Same with IDE. It has replaced SCSI on home/personal computers, and even in entry level servers.

And the same is true for SAS and SATA, although thanks to SAS adapters being compatible with SATA drives it's not as black and white (often SAS controllers are used to control SATA drives).

Don't know but I'm sure in a couple of years TB will be the main replacement for FireWire.

Maybe. Maybe not. USB3 might as well be 'good enough' for connecting external local storage and other devices, and even more stuff will probably sit on a NAS/SAN or in the cloud.

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Sorry but USB is not a competitor to FireWire never was, and IDE was never a competitor to SCSI.

That's not true. Of course USB was a competitor to FW. Both standards were used for external storage but USB has taken the majority of the market for itself and away from FW. No question that USB2 was the technically inferior solution but at the end of the day it was good enough for most situations. FW has only lived on in some niche areas.

Same with IDE. It has replaced SCSI on home/personal computers, and even in entry level servers.

And the same is true for SAS and SATA, although thanks to SAS adapters being compatible with SATA drives it's not as black and white (often SAS controllers are used to control SATA drives).

IDE didn't replace SCSI. SAS replaced SCSI. SATA replaced SCSI, in low end systems, and "PATA" (which is actually just legacy ATA, which superceded IDE). Probably the only example of PATA replacing SCSI would be in Macs. In the Performa and earlier lines they used mostly Quantum drives with a SCSI interface, which they started dropping somewhere in the Performa line.

You would have to go back to where PC was a newly coined term to find SCSI prevelent in non-server Wintel systems.

If by "IDE" you mean "ATA", then I would have to agree. But the term IDE really should have died out when ATA-1 replaced it.

On the SAS -> SATA comment, that is one brilliant feature that I love. You can connect a SAS controller to a SATA drive, so you aren't stuck with paying an exorbitant amount of money to purchase SAS drives.

I used to be a big proponent of SCSI and Firewire as superior interconnects, but in the end the superior interconnect is the one that is fast, cheap and flexible. USB is fast "enough", definitely cheap, and the most flexible interface that exists. Firewire was very fast, not terribly cheap, and could connect to hard disks and video cameras (and could network two machines, for the five people who used that feature). Thunderbolt is extremely fast, not cheap, and more flexible than Firewire, but doesn't share a whole lot of similiar devices as USB. It will be interesting to see if TB ports start replacing USB ports on hard disk drives and cameras.

You can not compare retail pricing to OEM pricing. When you buy in lots of 10,000 and provide your own support, you get a very big discount. Also, the V7900 is not what is in the new Mac Pro. We do not know exactly what the D300 is. But if it was a V7900 then it would be called a V7900.

Well actually you can, because we're comparing retail for the complete system vs. retail for the parts.

In all seriousness, I think that might be the biggest surprise for me about [many] non-Apple computers: that people put up with the noise. If I can hear my computer, it's too loud.

This is nonsense. Modern builds are very quiet - even with 'gaming' cases. Some builders don't know what they are doing - or they simply don't care about noise. Either way pretending noise is a problem for PCs builders is simply not true. They use standard off the shelf parts - thus they have a lot more flexibility with regards to quiet.

Building a computer is a better alternative. The parts used for this Mac Pro are fast, but building your own system will be cheaper. Unless you want OSX for some reason.

The design is terrible. Apple sure is going downhill.

Cheaper isn't everything.

This will be much quieter, take up less space, has 6 thunderbolt 2 ports that can support channel bonding (i.e.. you can bond them to 6x20Gb in a single virtual pipe, according to the most recent keynote).

In all seriousness, I think that might be the biggest surprise for me about [many] non-Apple computers: that people put up with the noise. If I can hear my computer, it's too loud.

This is nonsense. Modern builds are very quiet - even with 'gaming' cases. Some builders don't know what they are doing - or they simply don't care about noise. Either way pretending noise is a problem for PCs builders is simply not true. They use standard off the shelf parts - thus they have a lot more flexibility with regards to quiet.

Bullshit.

I have a build here: Core i5-4430 (stock cooler), GT760, antec 1100.

The case rattles like fuck.

It's 1 month old.

He should have clarified that modern builds can be quiet, if built correctly.

In the heyday of the K6 when I was building systems it was a badge of honor if you could flip the computer on its back and use it as a hovercraft. I think my record was 11 fans and three Seagate Elite SCSI hard disks in a full tower. That thing sounded like an air handler, and it was glorious!

Not sure why so many people are knocking this for being overpriced. I think the issue may have a lot to do with a (false) perceived parallel between desktop and workstation components. If you build an i7 quad-core rig with 12GB RAM and dual AMD GPUs, you will probably spend around half the Mac Pro's asking price. But that's a silly comparison. Workstation CPUs, RAM, motherboards, GPUs are all significantly more expensive.

If you check out HP and Dell's offerings - or any workstation provider for that matter - you'll see the prices are about even. Depending on how high-end those GPU's are, it might actually be aggressively priced. I think the long-term success of this platform will hinge on the third-party market for external expandability.

In fact I'd wager the reason it ISNT IN RETAIL STORES IS BECAUSE OF PEOPLE MAKING THIS ERRONEOUS CLAIM THAT THERE ARE NO DEVICES

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From Davidoff:Aside from the fact that screaming makes you look silly, the reason people claim that there are very few TB devices is that, in comparison with other, more widespread technologies (like PCIe, SATA, USB etc) the number of TB devices is negligible.

Silly enough to make you pay attention?! Your "comments" make YOU look silly.

Well duh. Tell me something I don't know.

There were a ton more USB devices than Firewire devices for a few years because USB *IS* good enough for the average Joe Six Pack consumer. That isn't who the new Mac Pro and thunderbolt are made for. MEDIA CREATORS need thunderbolt and that's all there is to it. eSata doesn't hot swap, doesn't carry video and doesn't replace twenty cables the way thunderbolt does.

And no matter how many times you repeat it... IT'S STILL NOT AN APPLE THING!

It's an intel technology that Apple adopted because it's useful to Apple's users. It's not Apple's fault that many PC OEM's are cheapasses who choose to compete primarily by making everything in the absolute cheapest way possible.

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Paraphrased:"Why pipe USB/sata/whatever through thunderbolt?"

The answer to this should be so ridiculously obvious to anyone who understands thunderbolt's capabilities. Let's say you have two Thunderbolt ports and 2 USB3 ports. You've filled up and maxed out your USB ports. Now what?!"

How many USB3 ports could you hook up to a single Thunderbolt port before you maxed it out?

Does that make it clear why thunderbolt is JUSTIFIABLY expensive? (For now at least)

Davidoff:Same with HDMI or PCIe. A HDMI cable costs a few bucks. How much was that active TB cable again?

I love that you used HDMI as a An example of "better/affordable." Do you remember (perchance) what HDMI cables cost when they first came out?!

(I can't believe you even lumped PCIe along with HDMI into that to start with. It's not even apples and oranges. More like tangerines versus doughnuts.) It shows you have no understanding of the word "commodity."

EDIT:

And if all that wasn't enough this is what Tom's hardware had to say about finding a USB 3 RAID setup to include in the test:

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"It was a little harder to track down a USB 3.0-capable solution"

Got that? It was HARDER TO TRACK DOWN A USB3 RAID than one using thunderbolt. What was that about "no devices" again?

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

Yes, it is. Please stop living in such a bubble and actually go price compare at any old OEM. Just tossing together a roughly comparable system at a bunch of places, with a quad core Xeon, dual FirePros comes under $2K, and unlike the Mac Pro it doesn't require another $1k in external boxes and cables just to get basic stuff like slots or HDD bays. Even with the Apple premium it's outrageous.

The D500 = the W8000 retailing at 1,308.USD. Apple is providing roughly two of these or just about 2,500.USD of GPU value. But because of the strategic decreases as noted above the real value Apple is providing may be much closer to just under 2 grand.

Your 'specs' don't even match the cost of the GPUs alone.

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It appears you're a lying sack of shit. Typical neckbeard hater. At least you can't breed.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

Yes, it is. Please stop living in such a bubble and actually go price compare at any old OEM. Just tossing together a roughly comparable system at a bunch of places, with a quad core Xeon, dual FirePros comes under $2K, and unlike the Mac Pro it doesn't require another $1k in external boxes and cables just to get basic stuff like slots or HDD bays. Even with the Apple premium it's outrageous.

I feel I should mention that six thunderbolt ports eliminates the need for drive bays. Also... what would it have cost to fill it up with SSD's? The dual GPU's will probably eliminate the need for a video card upgrade in a WORKSTATION machine for the next 5 years at least. (The Mac Pro is not made for gaming even though I'm sure it's perfectly capable.)

That said, I do agree that it's overpriced. But I don't expect that to last long. This is an introductory price to hook all the pros that would gladly sell their mother's souls for a faster Mac Pro. I expect to see less expensive models down the pike. Keep in mind all the R&D that went into this new box. They can make their money back from all of the first adopters who are more than willing to fork over whatever Apple asks in the short term. Why? Because they are heavily invested in Apple. Why? Because it's the OS they prefer. Why? Because they don't want to deal with Windows. Why? Because experience has shown them it's a pain for media production. Why? Because that's been their experience. Why? Because it doesn't matter how good Windows might be now because Mac has always been good for this. Why? Because... (Yeah you can pretty much do this forever.)

(Although as a former "pro" user of Pro Tools on Windows I CAN tell you it was an utter pain because Service Packs would break 90% of everything in it. I never had this problem on OSX.)

You don't buy Macs for bleeding edge technology as much as predictability. (Which is kind of odd considering some of their "design" choices. But OSX stays pretty constant in it's core functionality.)

Some people go on about how it's 'overpowered' - but I'm tired of making sacrifices for my computer's limitations. I'm looking forward to having an 'overpowered' canvas to hang new ideas and projects on. Example - yes, I don't do much pro-vid because the CPUs I've used lately are woefully under powered in doing what's necessary on an ad-hoc basis.

Yes, I can coax my machine and wait for the results, but it'd be nice to chase down blind alleys and produce something in a fluid exploratory manner rather than having to script my time to a static framework because I don't have the horsepower to do anything else.

Dave Girard is kinda out there me thinks. Why? Well, Pros in a studio environment don't use internal disks like they used to-they are connected to something-especially external fast RAIDS or to networked storage. So, the internal storage is mute! Period! A very PC-minded focus and way out of date, too.

Next, some have discussed the issue of a small SSD. Internal SSD is for the system only folks. A Pro in a studio setting, or anywhere for that matter, unless forced due to circumstances, would never use the system drive to work on a project. You can tell experience by how one uses a system drive. I teach my students to never use the internal drive for development-ever! Novices think large internal drives for everything. Yep, let the flames begin, but do so at the peril of making yourself known.

Next, this is a serious Pro machine! It is not for an average "user" and Apple knows this. This machine is for the 4K and 8K video edit world. It is a powerhouse for Photographers. It is a beast for high-end visual affects. It is for top-end productions that need power and plug-in expansion. It's a polish machine in the production workflow. See next point >

Next, and quite simply, the new Pro is a network and Plug 'N' Play machine to meet a myriad of individualized needs. Most importantly, Thunderbolt 2 is the connection hub of the future for digital media and rightly so! Why have an internal card when you can quickly and easily daisy chain? For example: My University Digital Media program will simply use a Thunderbolt/10 Gb Fibre dongle to connect to our CatDV and Facilis TeraBlock asset management system. Bingo-fast and furious! Faculty and students use that connection to send renders and encodes to a our racked Boxx modules, too. All these external storage and processing nodes are located in the Univeristy Datacenter half-way across campus. Think connected. Why do we need an internal card? We don't! Plus, there are many new devices that can be added to Thunderbolt external cases to accomplish many demanding media tasks and are handy to be removed and used elsewhere at a moments notice - like a laptop for in-field work. Try that with an "all internal" system. Flexibility is the new game in town. Think ROI folks!

Lastly, when Dave Girard say's that there isn't an internal Optical Disc Drive I just laughed! Really. Wow, so year 2005ish When was the last time I ever burned a CD or DVD? I can't honestly remember -

These are the same as 7870 GPUs, which are $200 each for retail cards, Apple certainly paid less than that. Labeling them Workstation cards lets some people justify the outrageous pricing here, but this is nothing but a massive cash grab.

HDMI?? This isn't the kind of machine you hook up a low res 1080p monitor to. If you're not sinking for 4k displays, this is not the machine for you.

HDMI supports 4K.

HDMI 1.4 supports 4K resolutions only at 30Hz maximum, whereas DisplayPort does 4K at 60Hz because it has about twice the bandwidth. 30Hz is fine for most video material, including films, but is considered to be insufficient for most modern gaming.

I prefer DisplayPort and don't blame any manufacturer that chooses to forgo HDMI, because the former is a free specification but the HDMI consortium charges per-device royalties for the latter.